Hassan Rouhani
Hassan RouhaniReuters

Iran on Tuesday dismissed a U.S. demand for United Nations nuclear inspectors to visit its military bases as “merely a dream”, Reuters reports.

The U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, recently asked the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to seek access to Iranian military bases to ensure that they were not concealing activities banned by the 2015 nuclear deal reached between Iran and six major powers.

Iranian government spokesman Mohammad Baqer Nobakht rejected the demand at a weekly news conference broadcast on state television on Tuesday.

“Iran’s military sites are off limits,” he said, according to Reuters. “All information about these sites are classified. Iran will never allow such visits. Don’t pay attention to such remarks that are only a dream.”

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani later said the U.S. call was unlikely to be accepted by the UN nuclear watchdog anyway.

“The International Atomic Energy Agency is very unlikely to accept America’s demand to inspect our military sites,” Rouhani said in a televised interview.

He did give an indication as to why he believed the IAEA would decline the request. Under the deal, the IAEA can request access to Iranian sites including military ones if it has concerns about activities there that violate the agreement, but it must show Iran the basis for those concerns.

U.S. President Donald Trump has been a vocal critic of the Iran nuclear deal, which was signed during the term of the Obama administration, describing it as “the worst deal I’ve ever seen negotiated”.

While Trump's administration recently confirmed that Iran is adhering to the nuclear agreement it signed with world powers in 2015, Trump and other officials in the administration have stressed that the President still has reservations about the deal.

Iranian officials have downplayed Trump’s threats to tear up the nuclear deal. The head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization said last week his country can resume high-level uranium enrichment within five days if the United States tears up the 2015 nuclear deal.

The U.S. continues to maintain sanctions on Iran that are related to its ballistic missile tests. Rouhani recently threatened that Iran would walk out on the nuclear deal if the United States continued to apply fresh sanctions.